Till
1968, there was only one university in Kerala. All colleges, Arts &
Science, Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacy, Dental, Ayurvedic all colleges were
under this university. Calicut University was the second one started
functioning when E.M.S.Namboodiripad was the Chief Minister under
the special efforts of the
Education Minister Jb.C.H.Mohammed Koya. Prof.K.C.Chacko, who was the Director of
Technical Education was appointed as Special Officer and later the Pro-Vice
Chancellor. Later Dr.M.M.Ghani, an eminent academician, was
appointed as the first Vice Chancellor of Calicut University. Thenhipalam where
the Calicut University had its campus became part of the newly formed
Malappuram district in June, 1969.
1968 was
also the year in which I passed my engineering course. We
had a five-year integrated course for engineering
after SSLC and one year of Pre-University. But later in 1970, the
duration of the engineering degree course was reduced to 4 years. Pre-University
course of one year was replaced by Pre-degree course of duration two years.
Still later four year course was converted to an 8
semester course .
At
that time, only three engineering colleges were affiliated to Calicut
University, Government Engineering College(GCE) Thrissur, N.S.S.College of
Engineering(NSSCE) Palakkad and R E C. Among these, curriculum
planning and preparation of engineering curriculum was mostly done
by members of faculty from R E C. The reasons for this are :
(1)members of faculty in GCE was often being transferred
to other government colleges and many of them were not taking up
this work and (2) many of the teachers in NSSCE at that
time were not highly qualified like those
in REC. Therefore, even if others did not like it, most of the
planning work for examinations too were done by the senior faculty in REC
Calicut. For the university, conduct of engineering examination was
real headache with 52 courses for the four year degree course with less than
1000 students in each branch. For other degree courses, the number of papers
were much less with large number of students. Getting examiners to set the
question papers, getting these printed etc was realyl tedious for the
examination wing. Moreover, the Senate and
Syndicate had very few members from the professional
colleges.
The major
problem at that time was that the engineering examinations were not
conducted in time. Often four-year course was normally completed in
4 ½ years. Even after examination dates were announced,
students from GCE or NSSCE used to come in
hired contract buses and pressurise the Controller of Examinations
with gherao to post pone the examinations on some flimsy ground that
there was some strike in their college or there was no water in the
hostel etc. As there was no strike or political interferences resulting in loss
of classes in REC, our students were
ready for the examinations. Most of the students from other states wanted to
complete the course in time and get some employment in their home states at the
earliest. They could go home only once in a semester after the examinations and
this also could not be done if the examinations were postponed indefinitely.
Many students who got jobs through campus placement were likely to lose their jobs if they do not
complete the course in time.
Most
of the students in GCE and NSSCE were from Kerala. Both had student unions
elected with support from students’ organizations sponsored by political
parties. Strikes and other disturbances were common in both colleges
and very rarely sufficient number of working days could be completed by
the time our students completed the semesters. When this
type of postponement of examinations became a regular phenomenon,
we started the next semester straightaway without conducting
the examinations. When finally, the dates for examinations were announced, the
higher semester class will be suspended and the classes resumed after the
previous semester examinations. This way we could manage to
complete the course without inordinate delay. In spite of these efforts, a few
batches took more than 4 ½ years to complete the course. Of course, this type
of bull dozing by REC was not liked by the students and staff members of the
other two colleges. But they had to keep quite as there were a few court cases
asking the university to conduct the examinations in time or be
prepared to compensate the students financially for the loss of
their campus placement jobs etc.
Members of faculty
in REC were taking the
lead in the revision of syllabus too. Any syllabus
revision should try to incorporate new trends in different branches
of engineering and the curriculum and syllabus revision was with this in view.
However, some staff members ridiculed this telling that the syllabus is copied
from M.I.T and Stanford and cannot be taught by their teachers. They were
creating obstacles in the revision of the syllabus even
after it was approved by Board of Studies by lobbying in
the Academic Council. Even the list of experiments to be
conducted in the laboratory had to be diluted to the minimum facility
available in any of the three colleges. As the external examiners
for the conduct of practical examinations had to come from the other two
colleges, we had no other option than to keep it like that. Many experiments
that can be conducted using modern equipment REC could purchase out of the
liberal grant from the government of India could not be included in the list.
There was a possibility that some of these may get damaged because of non-use.
Even the conditions for the promotion to higher semesters were diluted to the
extent that many students were allowed to complete the four-year
course with twenty or more back papers.
Under these
circumstances, REC Calicut wanted to get academic autonomy. However,
the Kerala or Calicut university act did not define a category called
autonomous colleges and we could not get this done until the formation of NIT
in 2002 by an act of parliament. Until then, we were
struggling with the inadequacies in other colleges under
the university.
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